Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has clarified his recent comments regarding Rahul Gandhi's 'Chhatron ki goonj' programme and youth engagement, asserting that his remarks were misinterpreted by the media as an attack on his party's leadership and instead highlighted the crucial need for political parties to connect with Gen Z.
Key Points
- Shashi Tharoor clarified his remarks on Rahul Gandhi's 'Chhatron ki goonj' programme, stating they were misinterpreted as an attack on Congress leadership.
- Tharoor emphasised the need for political parties to open doors and create pathways for the next generation to shape politics.
- He questioned why 'Chhatron ki Goonj' did not resonate as much as other youth protests, urging parties to 'interrogate' their failure to connect with Gen Z.
- Tharoor accused journalists of distorting his statements made at an IIMUN event in Mumbai.
- He stressed that established parties risk becoming irrelevant if they fail to listen to new voices and engage with young people effectively.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Saturday sought to explain away his remarks suggesting that Rahul Gandhi's 'Chhatron ki Goonj' programme had not resonated as much as the Cockroach Janata Party's protest among Gen Z, decrying that the media was interpreting it as 'an attack on my own party or its leadership'.
He insisted that he was stressing that political parties must open their doors and create pathways for the next generation to gain the power to shape politics.
Addressing Misinterpretations
Tharoor had on Friday, while speaking at an event in Maharashtra, said that all opposition parties have to be conscious of the fact that they didn't 'provide a route into our parties for the kinds of people who are at Jantar Mantar last month'.
The established parties will cease to be relevant unless they can listen to the new voices that they haven't heard so far, he said.
He went on to say that Rahul Gandhi's 'Chhatron ki Goonj' programme had raised the same issues as the Cockroach Janata Party.
On being asked that the 'Chhatron ki Goonj' rallies did not resonate as much as the one at Jantar Mantar did, Tharoor said, "Correct. And that's why we need to ask ourselves what we failed to do."
"Did we fail to listen? Did we fail to tap into the old cliche of having our finger on the pulse of the people? Was our finger missing from the pulse of Gen Z. That's something we really need to interrogate."
Tharoor's Defence on Social Media
On Saturday, Tharoor claimed that journalists have distorted his remarks.
'It takes a particular combination of incompetence and malice for some media to interpret my conversation with Rishabh Shah at @iimunofficial as an attack on my own party or its leadership.
'Here is the entire video, uncut and unexpurgated, in full, of the conversation. Watch it and judge for yourself, as clearly none of the Journalists distorting it have done,' Tharoor said in a post on X.
The Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, who is a former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, shared his entire conversation at the India's International Movement to Unite Nations (IIMUN) in Mumbai on August 7.
Tharoor's office also shared a video of a part of his conversation and said, 'Context is often more instructive than commentary. Beyond the noise lies Dr Shashi Tharoor's point: India's young people must not remain spectators to politics. Parties must open their doors, create pathways to leadership and give the next generation the power to shape our politics.'
Engaging the Next Generation
Earlier in his remarks at the event, Tharoor, when asked whether the parties have failed to read the pulse of the Gen Z, said, 'I have written an article in which I am going to make an argument that all opposition parties have to be conscious of the fact that we didn't provide a route into our parties for the kinds of people who are at Jantar Mantar last month.'
'To my mind, that is actually something we really need to examine. How do young people get into established parties where there are hierarchies, entrenched establishments, dynastic considerations, and political networks?
'How does a new young person come in and if they come in what do they get to do -- stand behind the established leaders to make up the numbers in mass rallies, to do foot soldier work? Can they actually be the people who make the difference? I think, one thing that we have been arguing.'
'I think we really, as the American expression goes, need to wake up and smell the coffee. Let not our repertoire be that we will bypass and be irrelevant because we failed to listen,' he said.
The established parties will cease to be relevant unless they can listen to the new voices that they haven't heard so far, Tharoor also said in the video.
